We’re excited to announce that, even among countless school closures, we’ve awarded our EdTech grant for the month of March! For this past month, we’re happy to present the award to Ed Mondragon, who leads the Career and Technical Education department for the Granite School District in Salt Lake City, Utah! Like most educators, Ed is now searching for ways to make distance learning as meaningful as possible not only for his students, but for the teachers he works with as well.
Ed has been part of his district’s commitment to providing students with computer science education at all stages of their learning. He’s always been aware of the focus on developing courses, camps, and clubs for students to get as much exposure to coding as possible, but he realized something was missing when it comes to helping prepare educators to teach kids these increasingly important skills. So, Ed has recommitted to building a sustainable computer science infrastructure in the Granite School District, which notably includes a focus on teacher education.
In this project, Ed is focusing on the sustainability aspect and knows that a long-term program cannot be built overnight. In starting out, he will be introducing educators to the physical elements of computer science, allowing them to see, feel, hear, and touch them (if possible), though he has been forced to temporarily shift this instruction to a virtual format due to school closures. He is determined to keep teaching, however, and his goal is to provide equity to teachers at all grade levels.
The training program Ed is currently working on developing will be the first one that is completely district wide. He wanted to make sure that the tools the teachers would be using were durable and easy to learn—both for teachers and for students of all ages, so he has requested Edison robots as part of his award. Ed’s hope is that he can still use his workshops to connect with educators albeit virtually and, in turn, help them understand how connecting with coding activities can have a positive effect on their instruction.
Ultimately, Ed is hoping to make computer science education in the district something that’s completely accessible to students from all walks of life, especially those with varying socioeconomic backgrounds. He also hopes to bring teachers throughout the district together to build common curricular projects that can be taught using different resources. There are over 65,000 students in the Granite School District with a wide range of demographics and over 30 languages spoken at more than 80 schools, making the potential impact of Ed’s project that much more important!
Ed may have to start his program online, but has the resources to transition to in-person instruction as soon as he is able to do so. The trainings he will lead are going to be taking place after school and throughout the summer so that teachers don’t have to miss class time for professional development. At first, Ed wants to make sure that he helps remove barriers and ensure that all educators have equitable opportunities to learn how to bring coding into instruction and, ultimately, make sure they build up their own knowledge of educational resources and concepts.
Eventually, Ed believes his program will be a steppingstone that leads to educators throughout the district working together to build common activities and assessments that can serve as alternative ways of evaluating student knowledge, skills, and abilities. Once he’s able to introduce educators to coding using the Edison bots, Ed also hopes to get many of them interested in other areas of coding, including teaching with micro:bit’s, Raspberry Pi’s, and even drones. With his program and support from us, Ed is helping teachers in the Granite School District prepare for what it will be like when computer science is slated to be taught in every Utah school by 2022-23 since funding was recently secured for making that happen.
We congratulate Ed on being selected as this month’s grant recipient and wish him luck with what is sure to be a very impactful project! If you would like to apply for our grant for the month of April, you can find the application here. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for additional updates and submit an application for April’s award by April 20!